Fish of Faith started with a single question — what if faith looked completely ridiculous from the outside? Joe is a fish. He has no business stepping out of water. But that’s exactly what made him the right character for this story. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is the thing that makes no sense to anyone watching.
Letters from Xhale
Words that breathe. Stories that linger.
Fish of Faith — Xhale Chronicles
Christian Fantasy / Inspirational Adventure · An independent original short story from Letters from Xhale.
Prologue: The Pool and the Promise
The pool lay like a dark, polished mirror beneath the evening sky, its surface broken only by the soft circles of rising bubbles and the occasional ripple of a passing fin. Lantern-light from the human world quivered on the water, turning every wave into a moving line of gold. In the depths, where the noise of sandals and arguments turned to muffled thunder, a young fish hovered and watched.
His name was Joe.
Joe was not the strongest swimmer in the school, nor the brightest in color. But he carried a question inside him that would not leave him alone, a restless ache that made him stare upward when others hid in the reeds, that made him listen when others slept. He had heard whispers of a Man above the water who spoke and storms stilled, who called, and nets broke with the weight of living silver. A Man who seemed to walk too close to the edge of heaven.
Joe did not know His name yet. But he knew this: if God could speak to the waters, if God could summon fish into nets and coins into mouths, then perhaps God had not forgotten the smallest of His creatures. Perhaps even a young fish might have a purpose beyond the quiet circle of his own breaths.
